INEOS to restart crude distillation at Lavera on Monday

(ICIS) -- INEOS is offloading crude and expects to restart the crude distillation unit at its Lavera refinery in southern France on Monday, a spokesman from the Swiss-headquartered company said. The restart of the refinery began over the weekend, he confirmed.

The refinery was closed alongside others in the area after strike action, which began on 27 September, blocked Marseille's Fos-Lavera port and closed oil terminals. The strike was over guarantees of job security in a new port reform.

A number of refineries across France began to restart operations on Friday following a slowdown of nationwide strike action over pension reform and the end of action at Fos-Lavera.

LyondellBasell - whose Berre L'Etang refinery was also affected by the port action - said on Friday that workers at Fos-Lavera had voted to go back to work on Friday evening.

MRC

(ICIS) -- Petronas Chemicals Group (PCG) will raise about Malaysian ringgit (M$) 12.5bn ($4bn) from its initial public offering (IPO), partly to fund future expansion plans that may include acquisitions, the company said on Monday.

The company offered a total of 2.48bn shares, of which 2.19bn shares were offered to institutional investors. For retail investors, 293m shares were on offer at M$5.05 each, it said in its prospectus sent to the Malaysian stock exchange or Bursa Malaysia.

PCG comprises the 22 petrochemicals-related companies of state-owned oil and gas major Petronas.

Retail offering of the IPO shares was launched on Monday and would close on 9 November. Institutional offering of the shares, meanwhile, would close on 12 November, when the final IPO price would be fixed, it said.

PCG shares were scheduled to start trading on the Bursa Malaysia on 26 November, the company said. Meanwhile, the company said its net profit for the first four months to July of its current financial year totalled M$814m, with revenues at M$4.22bn.

Compared to the performance of the 22 companies under Petronas in April-July 2009, PCG's numbers represent a 61% surge in net profit on a 30% increase in revenue, based on the company's prospectus.

Funding for PCG's greenfield ammonia and urea production facility off east Malaysia would come from the IPO proceeds, the company said. PCG was also planning to develop a refining and petrochemicals complex in the western part of Malaysia.

MRC

(PRW) -- Injection machinery maker Wittmann Battenfeld is adding production capacity in its European operations to meet growing demand for its equipment and to prepare for further product line extensions.

In its first K exhibition showing since the take-over of the machinery maker by the Austrian automation and ancillaries group Wittmann, the company said it expanded production floorspace at the Wittmann group's existing robot production plant at Mosonmagyarovar in Hungary by 2,500sqm this year and is already building machine bases there.

The new manufacturing capacity is part of a ┬3m investment at the Hungarian facility. Wittmann group president and founder Werner Wittmann said the company is installing new machining capacity and a powder coating paint line, both of which will be operational by the end of the year, as part of its plans to make the Mosonmagyarovar location its centre for production of EcoPower models up to 180 tonnes.

Expansion of production capacity at the Hungarian plant is necessary to meet growing order books and to enable the company to move ahead with plans to extend the upper limit of its MacroPower models to 1,600 tonnes, he said. Currently the company only has capacity to produce machines to 1,000 tonnes a its plant at Kottingbrunn in Austria.

MRC

(PRW) -- Growth rates for polypropylene and other commodity resins should average 15-30% annually in India for the next several years, according to Kamal Nanavaty, cracker and polymers sector president with Indian plastics leader Reliance Industries.

The Indian plastics sector consumes almost 18 billion pounds of resin per year. That number is expected to double in the next five years, Nanavaty said in an interview at K 2010. Likewise, India's current annual BOPP film capacity of 1.1 billion pounds is expected to double during that same period. Nanavaty cited India's growing consumer retail base and changing lifestyles as reasons for this growth.

Nanavaty declined to comment on Reliance's growth plans, but he said that Indian companies other than Reliance will add 3.5 billion pounds of polyethylene capacity and 2.6 billion pounds of PP capacity by the end of 2013.

The global economic crisis also didn't have much of an impact on India's plastics growth, according to Nanavaty. Nanavaty also is anticipating the start of an Asian ⌠super cycle in 2014, when plastic demand will outstrip supply for many years.

Mumbai-based Reliance dominates India's plastic resin sector with a 70% market share. The firm ranks as the world's fourth-largest PP maker, based on annual capacity.

MRC

(China Plastic & Rubber Journal) -- Windmoller & Holscher (W&H) believes the VAREX 5-layer blown film line that produces film with 1000 kg/hour, to be a world record in polyolefin film output.

The new 5-layer VAREX blown film line produced at the K2010 is along with the new 5-layer 400 mm MAXICONE P die, which was developed specifically for innovative polyolefin-based film structures.

Recognizing a need in the market, W&H worked with resin manufacturer ExxonMobil Chemical, one of the world's leading manufacturers of metallocene polyethylene (mPE), to create a new generation of 5-layer films using a polyolefin base. The results are improved film properties as well as thinner films (downgauged) compared to conventional 3-layer films on the market. The new films achieve a substantial reduction of raw materials, a priority for W&H under their "greenovation" philosophy.

MRC